The rise of decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges: Evaluating the role of airdrops and governance tokens

【Author】 Makridis, Christos A.; Froewis, Michael; Sridhar, Kiran; Boehme, Rainer

【Source】JOURNAL OF CORPORATE FINANCE

【影响因子】5.107

【Abstract】While most cryptocurrency financial activity is conducted on centralized exchanges, decentral-ized finance (DeFi) has experienced a particular surge with roughly 90,000 users at the start of 2020 to 4.28 million by the end of 2021. Based on data collected from a popular crypto-asset data aggregation service and manually collected data, we document the rapid growth in decentralized exchanges and their differences in volume and price dynamics from centralized exchanges. Next, we investigate the role of airdrops and governance tokens as mechanisms for expanding the base of users and driving up the value of an exchange. While our results do not have a causal interpretation, they provide preliminary evidence that both mechanisms are effective for expanding and strengthening networks, particularly for decentralized exchanges. We also exploit two event studies that suggest the growth in decentralized exchanges is not driven by speculation, but at least partially by value-creating cybersecurity benefits.

【Keywords】Airdrops; Blockchain; Decentralized exchanges; Decentralized finance; Expectations; Smart contracts

【发表时间】2023 APR

【收录时间】2023-04-03

【文献类型】理论模型

【主题类别】

区块链应用-虚拟经济-DeFi